Original Ficlet: The Walker
Written for 15minuteficlets, word #137. Prompt: Kaleidoscope.
Title: The Walker
Fandom: None/Original
Word count: 295
~~~
I have seen the end of things, and it is beautiful, terrible and everything in between. It is desolation, stark, pure; a river that does not stop for those caught in its wake, a fire that burns and cleanses.
It is the reaper, smiling through hollow eyes and rotten teeth, with black cloak billowing around fleshless hands. It is death and it is everything that comes after death. It is change, like its namesake in the tarot; it is entropy, chaos, it is free and uncaring for the harvest it reaps and the seeds it sows.
I have seen cities burning, and skies raining fire and a rain which is not rain. I have seen flesh rent from bone, blood turned to poison, lakes covered in ashes, plains covered in dust. I have felt lashing on my skin rain which sears flesh, air which burns with electric fire.
These are endings, and these are beginnings.
I have seen other things too, other futures, other pasts, things which might never have been, things which never ought to be, a thousand windows into a thousand times and a thousand spaces, a shimmering, gossamer threaded kaleidoscope.
This is what I do: this is what I am. I walk, in the shadows of spent worlds and spent times, lost and forgotten, aborted children of history, stillborn in the waters of time. I walk, and I watch, and I listen to the echoes of dead worlds, and I remember, because someone has to. I record their passing, these fragile little earths-that-almost-were, and I pray over the silences marking their graves.
I pray, and listen, and watch, and wait, because someone has to. And I keep walking, because always there must be a walker, to remember things past-possible and future imperfect.
~fin~
Title: The Walker
Fandom: None/Original
Word count: 295
~~~
I have seen the end of things, and it is beautiful, terrible and everything in between. It is desolation, stark, pure; a river that does not stop for those caught in its wake, a fire that burns and cleanses.
It is the reaper, smiling through hollow eyes and rotten teeth, with black cloak billowing around fleshless hands. It is death and it is everything that comes after death. It is change, like its namesake in the tarot; it is entropy, chaos, it is free and uncaring for the harvest it reaps and the seeds it sows.
I have seen cities burning, and skies raining fire and a rain which is not rain. I have seen flesh rent from bone, blood turned to poison, lakes covered in ashes, plains covered in dust. I have felt lashing on my skin rain which sears flesh, air which burns with electric fire.
These are endings, and these are beginnings.
I have seen other things too, other futures, other pasts, things which might never have been, things which never ought to be, a thousand windows into a thousand times and a thousand spaces, a shimmering, gossamer threaded kaleidoscope.
This is what I do: this is what I am. I walk, in the shadows of spent worlds and spent times, lost and forgotten, aborted children of history, stillborn in the waters of time. I walk, and I watch, and I listen to the echoes of dead worlds, and I remember, because someone has to. I record their passing, these fragile little earths-that-almost-were, and I pray over the silences marking their graves.
I pray, and listen, and watch, and wait, because someone has to. And I keep walking, because always there must be a walker, to remember things past-possible and future imperfect.
~fin~